Monica Byrne's WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW Set for FringeNYC, Begin. 8/9

The Order of St. Margaret Sanger will present WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW by Monica Byrne, directed by Jaki Bradley, as part of the 17th annual New York International Fringe Festival - FringeNYC, and feature the music of Amanda Palmer. The production will run August 9th - 25th at Venue #16: Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios.

A smash hit for Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern in Durham, NC, this production brings to life the four young heroines - Anne, Theresa, Joan, and Lucy - in the very neighborhood in which the play is set, the Lower East Side, exactly one century ago. Performances are at Venue #16: Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios (440 Lafayette Street, near Astor Place; Subway: 6 to Astor Place or N/R to 8th Street).

In 1914, the era of the oppressive Comstock Laws, four Catholic girls in a reformatory enact innocent masturbation rituals that belie their regimented lives. But after the mysterious death of their roommate, a new girl, Joan, arrives with a trunk full of contraband: banned literature from birth control activist Margaret Sanger, including the famous pamphlet What Every Girl Should Know. Inspired, the girls make Margaret Sanger their patron saint and build an elaborate fantasy life where they travel the world, take lovers at will, and assassinate their enemies. Then one of them becomes pregnant, blurring the line between their fantasy life and their real one.

Playwright Monica Byrne is based in Durham, NC. In addition to being a resident playwright at Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, her work has been read, developed, and produced at Impact! Theatre (Berkeley, CA), Fox Valley Repertory (Chicago, IL), Pinky Swear Productions (Washington, DC), Backdoor Stage (Portland, OR); and in North Carolina, Manbites Dog Theater, the Elsewhere Collaborative, Common Ground Theater, Carrboro Arts Center, Durham County Library, and Ravenclaw Salon. In 2011 she was a finalist for an EST/Sloan Commission for her play Nightwork and in 2013 she was a semifinalist for the O'Neill Conference for her play The Pentaeon. She is a graduate of the Dirty South Improv Training Program and the Clarion Workshop, and has published in HowlRound, The Independent Weekly, Gargoyle, Wellesley Magazine, Atomica, Shimmer, and Electric Velocipede. In 2008 she was awarded the Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship for research in Ethiopia, India and the South Pacific to research The Girl in the Road, a debut novel forthcoming from Crown/Random House in Spring 2014. She has also received grants from the Vermont Studio Center, La Muse Inn Artist Retreat, the Durham Arts Council, and Millay Colony for the Arts. She holds degrees in biochemistry from Wellesley College and MIT. Her web site is monicabyrne.org and her blog is monicacatherine.wordpress.com.